COMPIÈGNE
At Gien, the little old town where Charlemagne's castle frowned down
upon the peaceful Loire, was bitter wrangling in the days that followed.
La Trémoïlle had got his truce, and meant to enjoy it; Alençon's lance
was still in rest; he demanded another campaign, in Normandy this time,
and the Maid to lead it with him. Joan, with unerring glance, saw the
thing that should be done. Let her go to the Isle of France, and from
that spot of vantage cut off the supplies of Paris as they came down the
river, and so reduce the city! Both these requests were put by. La
Trémoïlle did not mean that Alençon and the Maid should ever fight side
by side again. He had his way; the fiery duke, deprived of his command,
left the court in anger, and retired to his estate. No sooner was he
gone, than Charles disbanded the army, and fell to his dawdling again.
Once more the Brazen Head had spoken: "_Time was!_"
Hither and yon he drifted, a dead leaf skipping before the wind; with
him, would she or no, went the Maid. Her bright arms were dimmed now by
defeat, but still she was valuable--and dangerous! Charles was not yet
ready to give her up; La Trémoïlle did not dare to let her go; she
drifted with the rest. At Selles the queen met her precious spouse, and
together they drifted to Bourges. Here Joan was lodged in the house of
Marguerite La Touroulde, a gentlewoman of the queen's train, and stayed
there some weeks, praying often in the churches, giving to the poor,
bearing herself, as ever, simply and modestly. Girls brought her their
rosaries, begging her to touch them. "Touch them yourselves!" she said
laughing. "They will get as much good from your touch as from mine."
She talked much with her kindly hostess, as they sat together in the
house, or went to and from mass and confession. Dame Margaret suggested
that probably Joan's courage in battle came from the knowledge that she
would not be killed.
"I have no such knowledge," said the Maid; "no more than anybody else."
This good woman testified later that Joan gave freely to the poor and
with a glad heart, saying, "I am sent for the comfort of the poor and
needy." Testified also that the Maid was "very simple and innocent,
knowing almost nothing except in affairs of war."[63]
Meantime, Charles and La Trémoïlle were holding councils, after their
manner. What to do, with affairs in general, with the Maid in
particular? They must not stir up Burgundy; it would be well to let the
English alone just now, while the truce held; yet here was this little
saintly firebrand, demanding persistently to be allowed to save the
kingdom! Who wanted to save the kingdom? Certainly not La Trémoïlle. At
last, after much cogitation, he hit on a project, at once safe and
promising. Here were two little river towns, La Charité and St. Pierre
le Moustier, conveniently near by, held for Burgundy by two soldiers of
fortune, Perrinet Grasset (who began life a mason), and Francis of
Surienne, a Spaniard, uncle of that Rodrigo Borgia who was later to
disedify Christendom as Pope Alexander VI. La Trémoïlle had a grudge
against Grasset; had been captured by him once upon a time, and made to
pay a large ransom, to his great inconvenience. Why not get up an
expedition against these two places, and send the Maid in charge? If she
succeeded, well; if not--still well enough! She would be discredited,
and little harm done. They did not actually need La Charité and St.
Pierre le Moustier, though they would be handy possessions against
possible breaking of the truce.
La Trémoïlle proposed, Charles and the Council assented. Joan, poor
child, welcomed any chance for action. Late in October she left Bourges,
and with her, as titular commander, Charles of Albret, brother-in-law
and follower of La Trémoïlle, yet withal a good soldier, who had fought
with her at Patay.
St. Pierre le Moustier stood high on its steep bluff over the river
Allier: a strong little town, well placed, well fortified, well
garrisoned. Albret and Joan invested it in regular form, and after a
week of bombardment, having made a practicable breach, orders were given
for an assault. The French advanced gallantly, but could make no head
against the fire of the defenders. They wavered, began to fall back. But
they had to reckon with the Maid, unwounded this time, and feeling her
power come upon her. Standing on the edge of the fosse, as she had stood
at Paris, she called upon her men to come forward to the assault. They
hesitated; for a few moments she stood there almost alone, with only two
or three lances about her, among them probably her two brothers, who
never deserted her.[64]
D'Aulon, her faithful squire, had been wounded, and stood at a little
distance, leaning on his crutches and looking on. Seeing, as he thought,
all lost for the time being, he managed to get on his horse, and riding
up to the Maid, asked why she stood there in peril of her life, instead
of retreating with the others.
Raising the visor of her helmet, Joan looked him full in the face. "I am
not alone!" she said quietly. "With me are fifty thousand of my own, and
I will not leave this spot till the town is taken."
A strange answer; d'Aulon was a literal-minded youth. He looked about
him, bewildered. "Whatever she might say," he says in telling the story,
"she had only four or five men with her, I know it for certain, and so
do several others who looked on; so I urged her to go back with the
rest. Then she bade me tell them to bring fagots and fascines to bridge
the moat, and she herself in a clear voice gave the same order."
Was it the sight of her? When they failed at Paris, was it because the
white-clad figure lay unseen in the fosse, though the brave piteous
voice still rang like a trumpet through that twilight of despair?
D'Aulon thought it a miracle, as would most people of his time. All in a
moment, it seemed, the thing was done; the moat bridged, the troops over
it, the town stormed and taken "with no great resistance."
Yet once more, Joan, before your year is over, before your bright day
darkens into night! St. John's Day is near.
At La Charité there were no shining deeds; no victory of any sort. For a
month the French army lay before the place, and once an assault was
attempted; but the weather was bad, the men weary, hungry, dispirited;
briefly, it was November instead of October. Charles, though he had
given Joan money for the poor of Bourges, had none for feeding and
clothing his army. The town must have yielded soon, men thought, since
no one came to succor it; but the French could neither besiege nor
assault on empty stomachs, and the siege was abandoned. Charles, as a
sugarplum to console the heartsick Maid, conferred a patent of nobility
on her and all her family; "that the memory of the divine glory and of
so many favors may endure and increase forever."
It was a pretty stone, to take the place of bread. A shining quartz
pebble, shall we say? Or that curious thing called iron pyrite, which
has been taken for gold before now, in a good light and by the right
kind of person. Joan paid little heed to it; would never change her
sacred devices, the Annunciation, the Crucifixion, the Creator on his
throne, for any other; but her brothers set up a shield, with two lilies
on it, and between these a sword supporting a crown. Yes, and they
called themselves "Du Lys" instead of "D'Arc." This was all they got; I
have not heard that the king so much as offered to pay for painting the
new shield. The city of Orleans took a different view of matters, and
endowed the mother of its own Maid with a pension which made her
comfortable for life.
We know little of this winter of sorrow, the last in which Joan of Arc
was to breathe free air. She spent part of it in Orleans, where the
faithful people made much of her as usual; part at Mehun on the Yevre,
where Charles kept his winter court. The truce with Burgundy had been
extended to Easter 1430. John of Bedford had been kindly invited to
share it, but declined, and kept up a lively guerilla warfare in
Normandy. There was more or less fighting around Paris, too; but with
that we have no special concern.
At Mehun there was nothing for Joan to do. She was no courtier; she was
not wanted at the Councils over which the fatuous King and his fat
favorite presided. Since Paris and La Charité, the crowd did not flock
so eagerly to see her. Indeed, people began to talk about other
wonderful women who appeared about this time. Catherine of La Rochelle,
for example, had been visited by a lady in white and gold, who bade her
ask the king for heralds and trumpeters and go about the country
raising money. She had, it appeared, the secret of finding hidden
treasure. How, people asked, if here were a new revelation? The Maid's
was an old story by this time. Moreover, there were rumors of other
Pucelles here and there; and at Monlieu, as was well known, lived a real
saint, St. Colette, who could make the sun rise three hours late, and
play--in a saintly way--the mischief with the laws of Nature generally.
Our Maid was at Monlieu that very November; she may have met St.
Colette, and talked with her of matters human and divine; who knows?
We do know that she met Catherine of La Rochelle, who came to Mehun that
autumn or winter; and that she advised the lady to go home, see to her
household (she was a married woman), and take care of her children.
Catherine in return advised Joan not to go to La Charité, "because it
was much too cold." Evidently, a lady who liked her little comforts.
Joan asked St. Catherine about her namesake, and was told that her story
was nonsense. Still, the two women had much talk together. The
Rochellaise had high ambitions, was not in the least minded to go home
to husband and children. She wanted to go in person to Philip of
Burgundy and make peace; she wanted to prophesy for the king; like Nick
Bottom, she would play the lion, too. Joan seems to have been patient
with her; sat up all one night in her company, to see the lady in white
and gold, who failed to appear. We need not concern ourselves further
with Catherine of La Rochelle, though Brother Richard, the Franciscan,
admired her greatly, and would fain have set her up on a pedestal beside
Joan. She faded away presently, and is visible to-day only by a little
reflected light from the flare of the Maid.
Winter came to an end at last, and with it the truce. Philip of Burgundy
resumed hostilities, and Joan burnished her white armor, and laid her
lance in rest with right good will. The end was near; all the more would
she fight the good fight, so long as she was permitted.
About this time the people of Rheims wrote to her in great alarm,
begging for help. Their captain had abandoned them, and gone no one knew
whither. They had discovered a conspiracy, headed by Pierre Cauchon,
Bishop of Beauvais and Joan's inveterate enemy, to deliver them up to
the English. The discovery was made in time, but who could tell what new
dangers might await them?
Joan wrote from Sully on March 16th, promising speedy help, and bidding
them be of good heart, and man their walls in case of attack.
"You should have other good news," she says, "whereat you would rejoice,
but I fear lest this fall into other hands."
A few days later she wrote again, assuring them that all Brittany was
French at heart, and that its duke would shortly send to the king three
thousand soldiers, paid two months in advance.
In late March or early April she took a new step. After months of
waiting, after vigils of anguished prayer such as we can only feebly
imagine, she decided to wait no longer for the king, but strike by
herself one more blow for the country. She looked for no help of man;
she had no encouragement from Heaven. Her Voices were not silent, but
they spoke vaguely, confusedly; prophesied ultimate deliverance of
France, but said nothing of her being the deliverer; seemed dimly to
hint at some forthcoming disaster.
Taking no leave of king or Council (although it seems probable that
Charles knew of and consented to her departure), receiving no direction
from saint or angel, she rode out from Sully with her "military
household," four or five lances, among them her brothers and the
ever-faithful D'Aulon. At Lagny she found a little band of men-at-arms
who were ready to fight for France; they joined forces, and rode on
toward Paris. There, the Maid always knew, lay the key of the situation;
there, at what Philip of Burgundy called "the heart of the mystical body
of the kingdom," the final blow must be struck.
The chronicles have little or nothing to say about this journey; we know
that about Easter, April 16th, she came to Melun, and that the city,
hearing of her approach, rose suddenly upon its Anglo-Burgundian
garrison, drove them out of town, and opened wide its gates to the Maid.
Here was good fortune indeed. Joan crossed the Seine, and entered the
town amid general rejoicings. However it might be in Royal Councils,
the heart of France still honored and loved its Pucelle.
After such deep and manifold humiliations, Joan might well have been
strengthened in spirit as she stood on the ramparts of Melun on a
certain day in Easter week. Among the many pictures of her, I like to
conjure up this one; to see her standing there, leaning on her lance
(she was on sentry duty), looking out toward that "Isle of France" on
whose edge she now stood; no "isle" in reality, but the quaintly-named
province whose heart was Paris. I can see her uplifted look, her
kindling eyes, can almost hear the deep-drawn breath of high resolve and
dedication.
And then the blow fell.
She had always known that her time was short, that she had been given
little more than a year to fulfill her task; knew moreover, only too
bitterly well, how much of the short time had been frittered away in
spite of all her efforts; yet she had hoped against hope that she might
be permitted to finish her allotted task.
The Voices, I have said, had been confused of late; hinting at coming
danger, but specifying nothing. Now, as she stood on the rampart of
Melun that April day, they suddenly broke the silence, speaking loud and
clear. No one but herself may tell the story; hear her tell it to her
judges, a year later:
"As I was on the ramparts of Melun, St. Catherine and St. Margaret
warned me that I should be captured before Midsummer Day; that so it
must needs be; nor must I be afraid and astounded; but take all things
well, for God would help me. So they spoke, almost every day. And I
prayed that when I was taken I might die in that hour, without
wretchedness of long captivity; but the Voices said that so it must be.
Often I asked the hour, which they told me not; had I known the hour I
would not have gone into battle."[65]
These were the same Voices that had called the peasant girl from her
quiet home at Domrémy; the same that with trumpet note had sent her on
from victory to victory, through the burning days of Orleans and Patay;
now, as clear and loud, they pronounced her doom. She heard, and bowed
her head before the heavenly will in meek acceptance.
Is not this perhaps the most wonderful part of all the heroic story?
She never thought of escape; it never occurred to her to lay down the
sword. If it had been so willed, she would have held her hand for one
hour, would have kept her chamber at the moment of fate, if haply it
might pass and leave her free for further effort; since that was not to
be, forward in God's name! There were still some good hours left.
Only one step higher, good Maid! that final step in Rouen Old Market,
which shall take thee home to thy Father's house.
From Melun she rode to Lagny (whence the news of her presence spread to
Paris, causing great alarm), and in that neighborhood had several
skirmishes with the English, with little advantage to either side; and
so, by-and-by, in mid-May, she came to Compiègne.
I make no apology for dwelling a little on these French towns which
might--reverently be it said--be called the Stations of the Maid. Every
rod of French ground is now and for all time sacred to us and to all
lovers of Liberty.
Originally a hunting-lodge of the Frankish kings; the Romans called it
Compendium. Charles the Bald built two castles there, and a Benedictine
abbey whose inmates received (and kept down to the 18th century), "the
privilege of acting for three days as lords of Compiègne, with full
power to release prisoners, condemn the guilty, and even inflict
sentence of death."
The abbey church treasured the dust of three kings; possessed also a
famous organ, the oldest in France, given by Constantine Copronymus
(whoever he was!) to Pepin the Short. Louis the Debonair was deposed at
Compiègne. In its palace, Louis XV. received Marie Antoinette as his
daughter-in-law, Napoleon I. received Marie Louise as his Empress. In
the nineteenth century it was for many years the favorite resort of
Napoleon III. and his court during the hunting season.
The memory pictures of this latter time are brilliant enough. Lovely
Empresses, Eugenie with her matchless shoulders, Elizabeth, the "Violet
of Austria" with her glorious hair, sweep through the famous forest in
their long riding habits. Hunting horns sound the _morte_ and the
_hallali_; officers in scarlet and gold hold high counsel with others in
gold and green. All very gay, very bright; but these pictures shift and
change like a kaleidoscope. Presently they vanish. Half a century
passes, as a watch in the night. Compiègne looks from her girdling
towers and sees a gray tide rush forward, seething and boiling, almost
to her very walls; sees it met, stemmed, by a barrier of blue and brown,
slender, but immovable; hears the words which shall ring through all
centuries to come:
"_On ne passe pas!_"
Burgundy greatly desired Compiègne; would have had it before this, but
for the stout hearts of its citizens. It was in Compiègne that the truce
was signed, and Duke Philip asked explicitly that the city be given up
to him while the compact held. Charles and La Trémoïlle were willing;
anything to oblige! The citizens were bidden to open their gates to the
soldiers of Burgundy. Their first answer was to bar and double-bar the
said gates; their second, to send respectful messages to their king.
They were his true and loyal subjects; their bodies and their
possessions were his for all faithful service; but the duke of Burgundy
hated them because of their loyalty to the king's Majesty, and they
would in nowise let him in; would destroy themselves sooner.
The order was repeated; the gates remained closed. Philip of Burgundy
stormed; Charles was very sorry, but did not see what he could do about
it; offered Philip Pont St. Maxence instead. Philip took the gift, fully
intending to have Compiègne too; and bided his time. He was busy that
winter of 1429-30, marrying a new wife (his third, Isabella of
Portugal), and founding the order of the Golden Fleece; all this with
much pomp of tournament and procession. With spring came the end of the
truce, and the duke took the field at once with a large army. Now he
would have Compiègne, whether she would or no; would also overrun the
Isle de France, and relieve Paris, which still went in fear of its life
from the "Armagnacs," as Parisians still called the Royalist party.
Before the middle of May Philip was encamped before refractory
Compiègne, with only the Oise between. Matters now marched swiftly. The
Oise was deep, could not be forded; to take the city they must first
take Choisy-le-Bac, on the opposite side of the river, and come at
Compiègne from the rear. As it happened, the French about this time were
making a somewhat similar plan. They meant to take Pont l'Evêque, now in
English hands, with its strong defences and its bridge across the Oise.
This secured, they too would make a flank movement, circumvent the
enemy, and cut his line of communication across the river.
On May 13th the Maid entered Compiègne from the south, and was cordially
received. Here she met for the last time the Archbishop of Rheims, her
false friend, soon to become her declared enemy. On the 14th she
attacked Pont l'Evêque, but the place was too strong for her little
band. On the 16th, Choisy-le-Bac yielded to the Burgundians, and Joan
returned to Compiègne. No thoroughfare!
Her only way now, as Burgundy had foreseen, was by the bridge of
Soissons over the Aisne, thirty miles and more away. To Soissons, then,
in God's name! She set out without delay, the Archbishop riding with
her, and all her troop; reached Soissons--to find the gates shut. The
traitor who held the city for France, a Picard, by name Bournel, was
even then making his arrangements with Burgundy. He refused to open the
gates to his master's troops, and shortly after sold his city for four
thousand _salus d'or_. The bill of sale is extant, and should be curious
reading.
On meeting this check, the French army broke up into different parties.
Joan determined to return to Compiègne; was already on her way thither
when she heard that Burgundy and the Earl of Arundel were encamped
before it. Her company was only two hundred men, commanded by one
Baretta, a soldier of no wide renown. Alas! where was Dunois? Where La
Hire, Xaintrailles? Where her friend and brother-in-arms, the gentle
duke of Alençon? All gone! Some of them before Paris, keeping the
Bourgeois and his like in daily terror of their lives; some, it may be,
with their precious king, who about this time made the discovery (and
told the people of Rheims, as an astounding piece of news!) that
Burgundy did not really mean to make peace, and was definitely on the
side of their enemies.
At midnight of May 22nd, the Maid left Crépy with her band, and rode
rapidly through the forest. The soldiers themselves seem to have been
disheartened at the prospect before them. "We are but a handful!" they
told her. "How can we pass through the armies of England and Burgundy?"
"_Par mon martin!_" cried Joan; "we are enough. I am going to see my
good friends at Compiègne."
That was a wild ride through the midnight forest. Fancy, always at her
tricks, tempts me to make it even wilder; to tamper with the Shuttle,
and set the Loom astray. How if the centuries should in some way juggle
themselves together, and the Nineteenth come sweeping along with hound
and horn before the eyes of the Maid? What would she make, I wonder, of
those two lovely ladies, her of the shoulders and her of the silken
tresses? What in return would they make of the slim rider in battered
armor, urging her horse to the gallop? They would probably give orders
to have her arrested for disturbing the royal sport.
But how if, instead of these, it might have been given her, as part of
her reward from Heaven, to come upon that other band, in armor not
wholly unlike her own (seeing that our To-day must needs snatch from
Yesterday anything and everything that may still avail to help); that
band in brown and blue, who hold the line against the onrushing waves of
the Gray Tide? How then? She scans the Line; her keen eyes lighten, then
grow bewildered. France? Yes; but--England beside her? Friends then?
Allies? _À la bonne heure!_ The word?
"_On ne passe pas!_" and the Maid ranges herself beside those steadfast
figures immovable; and "They" do not pass.
Shuttle and Loom to their proper places once more; back to May 22nd,
1430!
Joan was right. Her little troop was enough, for no one molested them,
the enemy not having yet reached that neighborhood. They came to
Compiègne about sunrise of May 23rd, and once more were joyfully
received.
How Joan spent that last fateful day we know not from any chronicle; we
may be sure that she prayed, and heard mass if mass were to hear; we may
hope she had some rest, for she needed it sorely. We may well believe,
too, that she listened for her Voices, hoping for counsel and--if it
might be--cheer; but the Voices were silent. She was alone now.
Nevertheless, she said afterward, had the heavenly counsellors bidden
her go out, saying plainly that she would be captured, she would still
have gone. In another mood, it is true, after imprisonment, and with
death close upon her, she thought that had she known the hour, she might
have kept her chamber during it; but the first is the true mood, for all
who know her.
At five in the afternoon she rode out to attack the nearest Burgundian
outpost, at the village of Margny, opposite the bridge-head on the
northern side of the river. Boldly she rode her gray charger, in full
armor, wearing a surcoat of scarlet and gold, followed by her four or
five hundred men-at-arms, horse and foot. The enemy, taken by surprise,
scattered in disorder. All might have gone well, had not John of
Luxembourg, commander of Flemings at Clairoix hard by, chosen this
moment to visit the Burgundian captain in charge of Margny. Seeing the
skirmish, and his brother officer in difficulties, he dashed to the
rescue, sending back meanwhile to his own camp for reinforcements.
Another moment and the tide had turned. The French were surrounded, set
upon, cut down, routed. The Maid tried desperately to rally them; cried
her brave battle cry, waved her shining standard. What mortal could do,
she did.
"Beyond the nature of woman," says Chastellain, the Burgundian
chronicler, "she did great feats, and took great pains to save her
company from loss, staying behind them like a captain, and like the
bravest of the troop."
Twice she charged the men of Luxembourg and drove them back. In vain!
the hour was come.
She was alone now, save for her brothers, d'Aulon, and the faithful few,
her bodyguard. These could not save her. Round her, like hounds about a
deer at bay, leaped and shouted the Burgundian soldiers, all eager for
the rich quarry. She was dragged from her horse, beaten to earth.
D'Aulon and the rest tried to help her up, but were overwhelmed by
numbers and made prisoners, every man of them.
"Yield thee, Pucelle!" cried a dozen voices, as a dozen brawny hands
clutched the slight form and held it fast, fast.
Joan raised herself, and looked round on her exulting foes, conquered
yet unafraid.
"I have pledged my faith to Another than you!" she said. "To Him I will
keep my oath."
So to the will of God she surrendered, who had never yielded to man, and
laid down at His feet her glorious sword.
FOOTNOTES:
[63] Lang, p. 190.
[64] They joined her probably at Orleans; little more is known about
them.
[65] A. Lang, p. 203.